For a 22-year-old driver, having such a successful and fiery Cup driver — not to mention the all-time winningest driver in the Nationwide Series — as your boss might seem intimidating, especially since Kligerman will become the first driver not named Busch to drive a Nationwide car for Kyle Busch Motorsports.

Then again …

"I drove for Roger Penske, the Captain, and I don't think you can find a much more intimidating boss than Roger Penske and I drove for him at 18 years old," Kligerman said.

"I don't tend to think that (Busch) is intimidating. I think more along the lines that he's a winner and he's compassionate about it. I like that. He's a person that can drive you to make yourself better. And if you observe him the right way and observe what he does and the things he does well, you can improve yourself.

And Busch won't be the first Cup driver who has hired Kligerman, whose career appeared to be in flux just five months ago.

Kligerman was the ARCA runnerup in 2009 while at Penske. He showed signs of potential in select Nationwide starts with the Penske organization and in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for Brad Keselowski Racing in 2011 and 2012.

But with Ryan Blaney now the primary focus of Penske's development program, Keselowski opted to make a driver change, leaving Kligerman looking for a ride for the final 11 races of the truck season. He quickly landed at Red Horse Racing and made the most of the opportunity as he won a race at Talladega and had three runner-up finishes. He improved from sixth in the standings to fifth — a significant jump from his 11th-place finish in 2011.

"I think people took notice that it wasn't a fluke that I had been in NASCAR for almost three years," Kligerman said.

Kligerman parlayed that performance into a full-time Nationwide ride for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2013.

"The second half of the season for me was really a career resurgence in a lot of ways," Kligerman said. "A lot of things that people were seeing out of myself at my former situation wasn't really indicative of the effort I was putting in and the actual results we were getting and how good they were with what we were doing it with — it wasn't really visible to the public."

With that success, Kligerman felt he was ready to move to Nationwide.

"You really have a two-year span in each lower level series before you can kind of get labeled," Kligerman said. "… What we were doing at Red Horse, it became apparent that if there was an opportunity to move to Nationwide, we had to take it."

Busch has 51 career Nationwide wins as a driver, but his KBM team struggled in its first full season last year, winning one race (with Kurt Busch) and finishing eighth in owner points.

Kligerman also points to his limited Nationwide experience as proof that he is ready (he had three top-10s in his last four starts for Penske) as well as his ability to fill in with fast times in the No. 22 Cup car at Michigan as signs that he can handle the transition from trucks to Nationwide.

"That (Nationwide performance) proved to me and gave me a ton of confidence that I could compete at that level in the right equipment. … Those things do add a little bit of confidence but my truck series, running consistently up front and consistently fighting for wins in the second half of the season gave me a ton of confidence that I belong here," Kligerman said.

Eric Phillips, a successful Nationwide and truck crew chief for Nemco Motorsports and KBM, will be Kligerman's crew chief.

While they haven't announced sponsorship, Kligerman said Toyota played a pivotal role in making the deal happen.

And could there have been one more source of motivation? Did Kligerman, in convincing Busch to hire him, use the fact that he had driven for Keselowski, who is not one of Busch's favorite people, as leverage?

"We did not, but obviously … ," Kligerman said with a laugh. "That's pretty funny."